Malaria Elimination

Since 2000 there has been major progress in the fight against malaria, with considerable declines in burden driven by increased funding and the rapid scale-up of control measure such as bed nets, insecticide spraying, and antimalarial drugs. With these gains being made in shrinking the world’s malaria map, the challenge now is for countries affected by malaria to eliminate the disease entirely.

Researchers at IHME are working with partners across the world to support these efforts, generating insights into the epidemiology and burden of malaria, and developing highly detailed mathematical models of malaria transmission in order to guide strategic planning.

Policymakers face urgent questions about how best to deploy their resources in the fight to eliminate a particularly complex and constantly evolving disease. Malaria transmission varies widely between and within countries, and whether a given control measure will be effective depends on the interplay of many different factors, from the biology and behavior of mosquitos to the environments in which people live, work, and travel. IHME’s research aims to elucidate and analyze these complex dynamics, and to incorporate them into models that simulate the impact of different interventions in real-world scenarios.

Policy relevance is a central consideration for this work. IHME and its partners aim to provide robust policy support in a range of geographies with varied malaria transmission, including Cambodia, Haiti, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Swaziland, and Uganda. Researchers consult closely with national malaria programs and their collaborators in these countries to make sure that analyses are tailored to local planning and operational questions, to help countries set realistic targets based on the specific challenges that they face, and to answer detailed questions about how, when, and where to deploy interventions in order to achieve those targets.

Partners: Malaria Modeling Consortium (MMC), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Malaria Control and Elimination Partnership in Africa (MACEPA)​